The Contamination of the Earth

Scholarly rather than polemical and of interest to students of environmental and economic history.

Kirkus Reviews

“How well do we need to understand industrial pollution and the public health sacrifices that are made by allowing it to continue before we stop it? Francois Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux broach that question in this superb history. With Contamination of the Earth  they challenge once again the Faustian bargain humanity is making with 'progress.'”

Mark Dowie, investigative historian and Lecturer Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century

“Jarrige and Le Roux's magisterial global history of pollutions delivers on its promise. Spanning time, geography, and industry, their account synthesizes a vast historical archive with a sharp focus on the political and economic factors that explain how, why, and where global environmental contamination developed.”

Julie Sze, University of California, Davis, and author of Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger

“The Contamination of the Earth is an essential corrective to how pollution(s)—fittingly pluralized—have been studied age by age, case by case, sector by sector. Few have attempted such a sweeping synthesis of pollutions' myriad drivers and consequences."

Rebecca Gasior Altman, writer and environmental sociologist

"The result [of the study] is impressive: a high level of information, extensive analyses with a wide scope, original propositions, and a new, historical picture of global pollution. The book will become a standard work in environmental history."

Harry Lintsen

Technology & Culture

April 2022